


Would A Simpler Explanation Please Stand Up?

by milesawayfromthevoid



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: "Miles why are you tagging Ben needing a hug?", Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Casual Ableism, Child Death, Gen, I always feel weird having to specify that but yea don't make this romantic you gremlins, I never really go into it but rest assured these kids are trans, It's Klaus and he's durable so you know. but still, Klaus Hargreeves Needs Help, No Incest, Not graphic descriptions of but still be warned, Overdose, Panic Attacks, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Temporary Character Death, The kind where a kids worry about mental illness without the language to express it, You'll See., also, one of them 5 + 1 fics, really Klaus-centric and introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2019-12-29 01:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18297260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milesawayfromthevoid/pseuds/milesawayfromthevoid
Summary: Klaus develops his powers first. They come not in a definite moment but in waves. It's a pain in the ass if he wants his siblings to take him seriously.AKA: In Which Everyone Thinks Klaus Isn't Okay, Until They Learn He's Not Okay But Can See The Dead This Time





	1. Sometimes You're A Mystery, Even Amongst A Family Of Superpowered Kids, And That's #Valid

No one knows, not even Reginald, that Klaus was the first to develop his powers. On the books, he's the last, even when Vanya's entries are erased. 

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t even one when he starts to hear them. He wasn't sleeping at night, instead crying and screaming in response to the ghosts’ own wails and shrieks. It’s still a full year before Luther starts toddling around and lifting furniture as he goes. Their father would give baby Luther increasingly heavy weights, noting the results carefully. He was proud of Luther's early, flagrant display of powers and that moment permanently cemented his place as Number One. Klaus, meanwhile, had his place cemented as the Problem Child. 

Klaus wouldn’t remember, but he’d be surrounded by voices of the dead at all hours of the day. They weren’t all at the point of screaming and wailing, not yet;  _ that _ came at age eight. But they were still awfully demanding of an infant, voices hovering just above his cradle and loud enough to keep him up through the night. They’d be desperate, craving any recognition of their presence and any hope of finishing their unfinished business. 

Hargreeves had no clue. His only point of comparison, Luther, was manifesting his own powers in more visible ways. Compared to lifting an oak table, not being able to calm down and sleep through the night seemed trivial. He knew there was something special about the kids, but like any scientist-turned-worst-Dad-ever, he was still in the process of observation. He wrote it off as Klaus being a fussy baby and would advise nannies to try and keep him separate from his siblings when they put them down to sleep. He’d brought in doctors to try and figure out what was wrong with Klaus, but all they could diagnose was colic, albeit an unusual case. They shrug helplessly, and Reginald Hargreeves was never good with helpless. 

After a few more weeks of next to no sleep, daddy dearest would give him a light sedative before his nannies put him down for a nap. It did help with the screaming and the ghosts, even if no party involved had any idea why.

 

* * *

 

At age three, right before Allison discovered her own powers through a combination of Disney original movies and her learning to speak, Klaus starts to smell the dead. Allison had caught one phrase spoken cheekily by a teen on TV and used it to convince the nanny to give her another slice of cake for dessert. Their father had caught on and would spend hours with her, learning the extent of her powers.

Klaus can’t put it into words but he knows that the smell is terrible. Later in life, an ex who was particularly fascinated with the whole “seeing the dead” thing would show him a video about a mortician answering questions. One of which being “what do decomposing bodies smell like?”, and the answer knocks Klaus back because, yeah, it makes sense now that he thinks about it. 

But as a toddler, the language escapes him. All he knows is that almost everywhere he goes smells bad. He’d loudly complains of rooms being unbearable and that his food tastes gross. It's worse if the voices are louder, but he's three and he has no idea what that means, except that he hates the voices and the odors. He would hold dryer sheets that got stuck to his clothes close to his nose because none of the nannies let him wear their perfume, not till Grace comes around. 

Him, Vanya and Allison were in the living room at the time, a plate of digestive cookies in between them. Allison and Vanya were painting, snacking occasionally, while Klaus kept breaking his cookies into increasingly smaller pieces. It was only when he got crumbs on Vanya's painting that she his eating habits were brought to the forefront.

"Stop, you're breaking it!" she cried out, pushing his hand away. 

"It's not good!" he argued, waving the pulverized cookie in his fist for emphasis and explanation. 

Allison, who was still preening from her personal training and had latched onto the key phrase of her powers, decided to resolve the situation, even if it didn't really help. Maybe it did, but Klaus was too young to really tell the difference. " _I heard a rumour that it tastes good_."

It wasn't entirely coherent, they were three after all, but it got Klaus to eat a whole digestive cookie without hurling. 

At this point, though, his father had pegged him as an attention seeker, with how he would throw tantrums, be loud, bump into things, tell stories and jokes to anyone who’d listen. Sure, he’d mark it down in that little book of his, but he was quickly writing it off as something Klaus just _did_ because he was bored. This line of thought would, ironically, haunt him for the rest of his life, once his siblings grew old enough to understand why their father would look at Klaus disappointedly whenever he complained and, in some of their cases, would replicate it. 

He's also started to respond to people that aren't there. He tries not to, honestly, but hearing his name being called frantically has a way of turning his head. His siblings don't have a language for it yet but give him funny looks whenever he insists someone is calling him. Oddly, the smells and sounds work in tandem. The pattern only becomes stranger as the years progress.

 

* * *

 

He’s five. Vanya had learnt and forgotten about her powers the year before, a quick shut down that lead to her getting locked in a cell. Diego was yet to throw his spork into a mug with impossible accuracy, even as Luther nudged the cup away to mess up the shot. He worked to hone them once he did, his father transitioning him from plastic darts to knives faster than any parent should. Klaus didn't get something he could learn. He instead gets a ceaseless chill and he never gets warm, _really_ warm, ever again. 

It happens literally overnight. He wakes up in the middle of the night, freezing, curled up under the blankets and unable to move with how much his body is shivering. The rest of his sleep is fitful and in the morning Mom has to come and get him when he can’t move for the bell. Grace takes his temperature, but he doesn't have a fever. Somehow, his body temperature dropped a few degrees. Hargreeves starts to take note but he can't affiliate it to anything. He marks down possibilities for Klaus, but no power is actually noted by then, just considerations. 

He notices that it’s warmer in certain rooms than others, and outside than inside. He starts to open windows in the middle of the night, starts to beg his siblings to join him outside whenever he can, because the temperature is higher but the voices are harder to ignore when he’s alone. He starts wearing his pyjamas under his clothes, because if he asks to wear his sweaters outside of winter his dad scolds him. It works for awhile.

Then one night, he decides to hang out on the fire escape, because it’s freezing in his room. The air outside is chill with the early spring air, but it’s still better than inside. He drags a blanket out, just hoping to stay there for a couple of minutes, but he’s tired and the voices are drowned out by the traffic down below, and he ends up slumped and asleep.

Five is the one to find him, because Five always woke up first and would watch the sunrise over the city skyline. He called for their Mom, who took his temperature again and found this time, he  _ did _ have a temperature. Turns out sleeping outside with only thin pyjamas and a cotton blanket was a great way to get a cold. 

“I figured that out all by myself! I’m a scientist now!” Klaus laughed through a sore throat as his siblings looked on in the infirmary, watching as their father chewed him out. And even if they didn’t think about it too hard, they all came to conclusions about Klaus that would last till adulthood.

Five and Luther figured he was seeking attention. He’d spent all night outside for a garbage punchline and he deserved the sore throat (according to Five) or at least the disappointed look their father was giving him (according to Luther).

Allison also thought he was seeking attention, but not for a punchline. He’d stayed out all night hoping someone would see him, ask him what was wrong. Maybe he was just sad, or maybe he was angry at how their father would spend more time with the others than him. Maybe he was just sulking. She felt a little bad for him, but Klaus was also a handful. 

Diego was worried about his mental health. He had just started to learn what “crazy” meant, even if he was still lacking the nuances. The books in his father’s library that they had to read for practice had no happy endings for people who acted weird, and Diego liked his brother, even if he was weird. He didn’t want him to go away. 

Vanya thought he was the coolest. If she was in his position, being scolded by their father after breaking the rules, she would shrink down and cry, maybe. But he was barely even looking at him, staring dead ahead like he wasn’t even paying attention. She wondered why he did it. Maybe he liked the way the city looked, or maybe it was just another way to annoy their dad. In any case, she wished she could be like him.

Ben was the only one who wondered whether this had something to do with his powers. Klaus acted weird, sure, but it all seemed to be connected in some way or another. Ben still wasn’t sure what his powers were, but he had a sinking feeling in his gut whenever he saw Klaus turn his head to answer someone who wasn’t there, or when he’d pick at his food because it smelled too weird. He gets a feeling that when his powers do show up, they’ll be not quite as simple as throwing knives or picking things up.

He stayed behind with him in the infirmary.

"You said the living room is a little warmer than your room, once," he told Klaus. "Next time, wake me up and we'll have a sleepover downstairs, okay?"

"Ok," Klaus promised. "Thanks, Ben." (And yeah, that's not what he said then, but their old names are so  _passé_ and their numbers have way too much baggage.)

They do manage one sleepover but their dad does catch them and it takes all of Klaus' convincing to only punish him instead of Ben. 

 

* * *

 

When he’s seven and a half, Five had jumped across the room for the first time after Luther was playing keep-away with his Gameboy. It started off as a regular old jump, as in trying to leap up and grab his video game from Luther’s outstretched arm, but he ends up disappearing and reappearing across the room. He celebrates these powers by rubbing it in all of their faces, quickly learning and mastering them. As for Klaus, it’s...well, it’s complicated. He starts to feel the ghosts’ presence, in a way. The sense of being watched, surrounded, by people he can’t see. It’s unsettling, and after Diego starts to question him on whether he sees things, with all the subtlety a six year old can muster, he starts to wonder himself whether he’s going nuts. And yeah, he doesn’t love everything about his home, but he does love his siblings, and his Mom, and Pogo, and his dad, sometimes, when he isn’t looking at him like Klaus looks at tomatoes (grossed out and mad that it’s in front of him). He doesn’t want to get sent away from here.

It’s enough that he stops complaining about the voices and the smells and pretends he’s actually okay. And he gets good at it! Instead, he starts to be more theatrical and funny and, even if it gets him looks, at least Diego stops looking at him like Klaus is making him sad, or Ben like Klaus is gonna get sick again. 

He doesn’t really notice it until one night in particular. Whether that’s when it actually started or when it was most prominent, he’s unsure. He was unable to sleep, as many nights go, and he decides to sneak downstairs for a midnight snack. Even though he holds his breath before he eats now and can stomach much more without the awful smells ruining his meals for him, he still eats way less than his siblings. It doesn’t usually bother him, but now that there’s nothing but people begging his name and the freezing cold of his room to distract him, he decides a little adventure paired with a bowl of ice cream would do nicely. 

He sneaks out of his bedroom door and down the hallway with a silence none of his siblings can replicate. He knows, he’s usually awake to hear them stomping and shuffling. As he gets to the staircase, just past Ben’s room, he feels a presence slot in beside him. It’s too dark, but it’s unmistakable: he hears quiet footfalls, feels the hairs on his arms raise when they get a little too close. By this point, he and Ben have been sneaking downstairs to get midnight snacks or grab toys they left behind plenty of times, and the person beside him feels so familiar, it has to be him. It’s too dark to see, but Klaus and Ben know their way by now, so he just goes ahead and figures Ben is following. He stumbles on the last step, catching himself on the railing, and feels the pinpricks of a hand hovering over his shoulder. 

“I’m okay,” he whispers, and the hand retracts. 

When he gets to the kitchen, far enough away that he can raise his voice, he turns on the light. 

“I’m so hungry I could eat this whole _house_! But for now, do you remember if we have any maple ice cream left?” he asks Ben. 

Ben is quiet, even by Ben standards. It’s weird, even by Klaus standards, so Klaus turns to face him.

“You know dad can’t hear --” he starts, but never finishes, because Ben wasn’t there. He looked around, walks up the hallway, all the way back up to Ben’s room. He opened the door and saw Ben sprawled out, snoring quietly. Klaus closed the door, his hands shaking, and ran back to his own room, diving under the covers.

He got yelled at for leaving the lights on in the morning, and no one questioned how his father knew that.

 

* * *

 

He’s eight years old when one of his more morbid abilities is put into use. Just after Ben learns about his powers.

Literally, just after. 

They’re on the roof, all of them, arguing over something dumb and petty. Maybe Five had taken the last Oreo that Vanya had been eyeing for the past half hour, maybe Diego accidentally stepped on Allison’s shoes and Luther had cut in, maybe Klaus had dropped Ben’s notebook into a puddle and the ink was bleeding on the edges. It didn’t really matter who started what, the situation was escalating in a way that only arguments between children do. At some point, there were fingers pointed and the fighting began in earnest. Hair was pulled, kids were shoved, Diego had grabbed the empty box of Oreos to chuck at Luther’s head. It would have been comforting to know they could all still act like children if they weren’t trying to rip each other a part. 

Ben, who at this point wasn’t being vigorously trained to keep all his emotions locked down, got knocked to the floor and scraped his knee pretty badly. He started to cry, childish anger mixing with pain mixed with stress from the fighting around him. Klaus, being knocked into by Five, tripped and fell onto Ben, stepping on his hand in the process. That’s when things turned from normal bad to world-shakingly awful.

Because Ben learnt about his powers. 

Because Ben, who wasn’t thinking about anything except how much his hand and knee hurt, shoved Klaus away from him. But his powers, the _Horror_ , unleashed through the split-second inattention of a child and directed to the source of their pain, shoved him too. 

Good news: it wasn’t coordinated enough yet to tear him apart, and one lucky shot from a tentacle had just batted him away.

Bad news: it batted him off a fourth-story rooftop, which. Yeah, for a scrawny eight-year-old, wasn’t that much better. 

“ _Klaus_!” his siblings screamed as he fell, weightless, world spinning, and then things went dark and silent in a sudden stop. 

 

When he woke up, there was a little girl hovering over him. Dimly, he was aware it was daytime, since light was shining onto him. But the world was off, somehow. It took him a moment to realize that it was also black and white. He was warm, at least, which was nice. He hadn’t been warm in a really long time. The girl, who looked a few years older than him, was looking at him with her lips drawn tightly. It was like Mom whenever he did something bad, or Diego and Ben when he turned around to answer someone who wasn’t there. Like he was disappointing her. Well, who was she to be disappointed in him, he hadn’t even done anything! Oh, wait, maybe she knew about him stepping on Ben’s hand, but that was an accident. Speaking of...

“How long was I out?” he wondered. He sat up, and the girl sat down next to him.

“Not long. It’ll still be a few minutes,” the girl said. Her voice was matter-of-fact but with none of Five’s smugness. “Think of this as a dream.” 

“Okay,” Klaus said. He looked around; he was on a country road. Or at least what he assumed was a country road, he only saw them in books or cartoons when his father wasn’t watching him. Maybe he was really in suburbia, he couldn’t tell the difference. “Did my brother knock me out?”

“Yes,” she said. 

“Ugh,” Klaus flopped back down dramatically. The grass and dirt was soft against his back. “That sucks, he  _ was _ my favourite. I guess that goes to Vanya or Diego now. Hey, who are you? Can I stay here?” He wanted to. It was quieter, and he got the feeling the little girl wouldn’t make him run laps and lift weights like their father did. 

“No, you can't stay. As for who I am, I created you.”

Klaus looked at her seriously, gasping. “Oh my god, are you my  _ mom _ ?”

“No. We don’t even look that similar.”

“Yeah, and Ben and I don’t look that similar and  _ we’re _ still brothers! Is this my power? Can I go back in time?” 

The little girl rolled her eyes. “You’re going to be such a pain in my neck.” she muttered. 

“Sounds like something my mom would say,” he needled. At this point, though, he didn’t even care if he was wrong, it was clearly annoying this little girl and he was getting bored of looking at an empty road.

The girl sighed, looking Klaus in the eyes. She looked very serious. Tired, but also a little bit sad. “Try to not come here again, okay? I know you’re gonna be in positions in the future where it’s easy, but please just do your best to stay away.” 

And Klaus is confused but also very offended. He’s a delight, why wouldn’t this little girl want his company again? “What do you mea--”

 

And then he was gasping for air. The night sky, blueish and orange at the edges and really blurry, was over him, and he could feel rain on his skin. Was it raining before? He didn’t think so, but he was kinda overwhelmed by pains in his back right now. He could hear crying somewhere behind him, and after a minute or two it was drowned out by the Voices. This time, though, they were less sad and lonely, more furious. Well, great. 

The colours swam again for a minute, then everything cleared. Above him was Mom. She smiled down, relieved, at him. 

“Welcome back, dear,” she said warmly. “You gave us fright, there, but we’re all so happy to see…” she falters for a minute, smile falling briefly, and Klaus forgets that she’s a robot. “Well. We’re happy you’re here again.”

“He -- he’s… is h-he oka-okay?” he could hear Diego say, but the crying doesn’t stop. It sounds a little like Vanya.

He wants to say he is, but breathing alone is taking a lot out of him so he just sorta whines. He tries to move but Mom puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him. 

“Stay still, sweetheart,” she said. “You took quite a fall, so Pogo is going to get a stretcher so you don’t hurt your spine too badly.”

“Ben…?” he rasped out, because whatever happened to him looked bad. And no matter what he told the girl, he couldn’t stay mad at Ben.  

“With your father, sweetheart,” she said. She seems to know there’s more he’s asking, because she continues. “He’s a little worried about his new powers, so your father is calming him down.” 

(And it’s bullshit, but Klaus doesn’t know it at age eight. Right now, he’s just happy to know that Ben is okay, because his powers looked very scary.)

 

They take him to the infirmary, and after a few x-rays they told him his spine was fine. He did have a concussion, though, which Grace explained by showing him his pupils. And he’s delighted to see how big they are, which only makes his father frown more. His siblings aren’t here to witness his jokes, and he’s left alone as Pogo, Mom and Reginald talk just outside, like Klaus couldn’t hear them. 

“I didn’t have to use the defibrillators,” Mom had said. “Diego led me to him, and I was just about to, but he woke up before I got the chance. I’m not even sure if he stopped breathing.”

“I think I can travel through time,” Klaus informed his father from the bed. “I met my mom.”

That gets his dad to come back into the room, frown lifted a little as he hurls question after question at Klaus. Pogo politely asked whether it was wise to drill him so soon after such a fall, but his father, for once, decides to pay all attention onto Klaus. Klaus feels a weird way about it, for sure, but he marked it down as pride. He described the girl and how the world was black and white, and how he was on a country road even if he never saw one before, and his dad’s scowl only returned. “Klaus, I met your mother, and she looks nothing like that. You dreamt of a girl while you were unconscious.”

Oh. That sucks, time travel would have been cool. 

 

Ben snuck in later and he looked worse than Klaus felt. His eyes were red and puffy, like he was crying, and when he sees Klaus he actually does start to cry again. All anger that Klaus felt in the moment completely evaporates because his favourite sibling is crying, and now he’s crying. Ben rushed over to Klaus’ side, carefully looking for casts or bandages, then only hesitating a moment before gently wrapping his arms around him.

“I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” he says between sobs. 

“It’s okay, I’m okay,” Klaus reassures. “I was mad when I was talking to the little girl, but I know you didn’t mean to.”

Ben pulls back and wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Are you sure you’re okay? Five kept telling me how you could have broken your neck or died or went into a coma and never woke up again, and --” 

Klaus feels his neck. “You fixed the crick in my neck!” he gasps in his best impression of that cartoon they saw this morning, but Ben isn’t happy. If anything, his lip wobbles more. Uh-oh. “No, no, wait, I’m okay! Mom just said I have a contusion.”

“A contusion? Is that bad?”

“Or a concussion? Either way, I just need sleep, she says. And to stay away from bright lights for the next few days.” He groans. “Aw, now I can’t watch cartoons! Thanks a lot, now you’ll have to tell me everything that the Scooby Gang does for the next few days.  _ Then _ we’ll be even.”  

Ben nods, still not getting that Klaus is joking. Klaus scoots over, because he doesn’t really know how else to prove that he’s okay, and Ben climbs into the cot with him. 

“Do you wanna talk about your powers?” Klaus asked, because the silence was killing him, the Voices were coming back, and his head was swimming too much to make a joke. The Voices are also madder than before, sounding accusatory. Again, Klaus did nothing wrong and the court can prove that statement, so he does his best to ignore them. 

Ben tensed, but spoke up before Klaus could tell him it was okay to not answer. “Apparently I can teleport a creature into my chest, or something. Dad says we still need to test it. I didn’t really pay much attention because…” and his eyes fill up again, and Klaus hugs him again, as best he can, and changes the topic. They talk about Scooby Doo and and their favourite planets and whether the first or second Addams Family movie was better. They talk about the books Ben was reading and the crafts they were making, and that they wanted to make friendship bracelets after Klaus was allowed out of the infirmary. It’s enough to make them forget why they’re there, and they fall asleep eventually.

 

* * *

 

  
He's nine years old to the day. All of his siblings, even if Vanya is a mystery at this point, had training specific to their powers except for him. At least until he claims a missing person is hanging out in their kitchen during a fateful breakfast (although the cereal they had was far from foretelling of the gravity of this moment). They had been flipping through the channels on the TV. Right as a face pops onto the screen, a voice, particularly loud, caused Klaus to turn and face where it's coming from.

A guy, barely out of his teens, looking freaked out and with a bruise ( _contusion_ , his mind supplies, after Mom had told him the difference) running across his throat, big and blotchy and a deep, dark blue. He got up to approach him, because the kid honestly looked just as panicked as Klaus felt. 

Part of him was worried this was just a hallucination, like Diego had once said. But the boy was so _real_ , the rising sun even cast shadows across his face. 

"Help me," he had begged, repeated, over and over and louder and louder. "Help me,  _help me, Number Four, help me!_ " Klaus stepped back, because holy crap this ghost knew his name (or as good a name as Four is, because the other name that Mom gave him doesn't quite fit like "Klaus") turned to the others, who were only looking at him, confused.

"What do we do?" Klaus asked. 

"Do about _what_?" Allison asked. 

"The boy, from TV!" Klaus pointed at him. "Right there! He's hurt badly, should I get mom?"

Luther rolled his eyes and the others looked at him like he's crazy, except for Ben.

"What's his name?" he asked, muting the little TV in the corner before the newscaster finishes his description. 

Diego looked uneasy. Five looked unfazed.

"I, I don't think..." Diego faltered.

"What would that --?" Five started, but Ben shushed them both.

"Just trust me on this, okay? I think I know what's going on. Klaus, can you ask?"

Klaus turned to the boy, and noticed that the boy was only focused on him. He didn't stop his pleads for help.

"Hey," he said, then raised his voice a little when the boy wouldn't stop chanting. " _Hey_ , what's your name?"

He stopped. 

"Jason Varna," he said.

Klaus repeated it just as their father stepped in. The look on his face, the moment his frown disappeared, told Klaus that maybe he wasn't crazy after all.

 

* * *

 

 

He's nine and a week and he just went in for personalized training. 

It's brutal. Every morning, his father runs missing persons cases and cold-case murders by him. He sees the dead bodies in the photos and surrounding him, as more faces attach to the voices out of the ether. He talked to a truly foretelling amount of detectives and police officers. All of whom were uncomfortable confirming gruesome crime scene details with a kid but happy for the information. He helped solve a lot of cases, but that doesn't make his powers any better. Or the ghosts any happier, for some reason. None of them go away, and they're all angry at him for not doing more, even if he  _is_ only nine. He later learns they're also pissed he came back when they didn't. Even when he closed his eyes, he saw them, their wounds and open eyes and missing body parts. He nauseous for reasons beyond smell now and he gets less sleep now that he can see them hovering so close to him. 

After a week, his dad announces it. Klaus was swaying from exhaustion. 

"Number Four has demonstrated the ability to communicate with the dead." He said, simply. 

Allison hugs him, and Luther claps him on the shoulder, and both tell him how happy they are that he has a power, because they don't understand how he feels about it.

Diego bites his lip and asks if he's okay, because he does understand.

Five hums and jumps out, because he doesn't really care either way.

Ben squeezes his hand while his other siblings move out of the room, because he knows what it's like to have powers you don't want.

And Vanya? Vanya looks on with jealousy, because she doesn't remember what it's like to have powers you can't control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me everything in my body not to call this chapter "In Which Ben Accidentally Yeets Klaus Off A Building" so I hope you guys are proud of me


	2. Just Gotta Breathe: The Dawn Is Coming Soon Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Drug overdose (not graphic), panic attacks, accidentally dying (not graphically described but still), and the aftermath on family.  
> Klaus, after learning about the nature of his powers, now has to deal with his specific trainings. They don't go over well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had this in my google drives for actually longer than I had Chapter One. I just wanted to upload it and be done with it, tbh. This year I kinda had a lot of writing to do for school and never really polished it, then depression hit when I was done.

Klaus was nine and a half when he went to the mausoleum the first time. No one knew about it. Klaus isn’t even sure how his dad made that leap from kinda hokey attempts at séances to trapping a child in a cemetery alone and calling it a night. Just that the change was massive, unexpected, and with zero preparation. He should know, as if he was given any forewarning, he wouldn’t take massive detours to avoid passing graveyards.

The first time, he was dragged out of the house right as everyone else was headed to bed. His father was calm, so he was calm, even as they put him in the mausoleum. Okay, yes, a little unsettled and wary, but calm nonetheless. The ghosts were just looking at him by this point, unmoving and quiet in a way that was just shy of eerie. He was told that he'd only be inside for an hour. 

By the one hour mark, the ghosts had moved on from just shy of eerie. They began to plead once they learnt that he could see them, making requests, describing the horrors of their death in order to garner some sympathy. Instead, Klaus got second hand experiences of all the horrible things people could do to each other. Maybe he found it a little weird that none of them died a peaceful death, but at the time he was too afraid to really consider it. His attempts to reason and calm them down did nothing. 

Then one hour turned to two, then another two passed, then three, and before he knew it was dawn and his father had opened the door.

"Unsatisfactory, Number Four," he said. "However, your presence is required back at the Academy for your lessons."

And so Klaus, covered in tears and cobwebs and dust, shaking from lack of sleep and absolute terror, was sent home to go about his day like he hadn't pulled an all-nighter in a cemetery.

When their dad tells the others that Klaus had spent all night with extra training and failed, it produces the desired effect. He gets understanding in Allison and Diego’s eyes, sure, but for the most part its covered up in disbelief that he failed at his powers when they come naturally to him and disappointment that he isn’t up to snuff. Luther and Five look a little concerned, too, but Luther is comforted by their dad's assurances that Klaus underwent something normal, and Five by Klaus' playful shrug.

Ben had a twinge of that in his eyes, at least before he remembered what "extra training" meant. By this point Klaus and Ben were already closer than the rest of their siblings, but it went beyond that. Up until he died, Ben never learnt about the first time, but Klaus knew that day that he had a kindred spirit. Klaus knew that Ben’s training was brutal, even if he never talked about it. Klaus wasn’t blind: he saw the way he’d hunch in over his stomach; the way he’d stare through things and then flinch when Klaus would nudge him to get his attention; and the pink spots on the cuffs and collar of his shirt whenever he’d get back from wherever he went to unleash the Horror. The others did, too, and even though Klaus never got recognition for the mausoleum, he’s at least happy the others weren’t so caught up with their own problems to not notice how Ben was clearly not okay. 

 

 Ben later approached him as he was alternating between nodding off and flinching awake, covering his ears against voices no one else could hear. He was wrapped in five blankets, cold despite the summer day.

"That bad?" He asked, and Klaus huffed a laugh. 

"Oh, this polar vortex? This is a piece of cake, last night blew chunks," Klaus said. If any other sibling asked him the same question, he'd lie, but it was _Ben_. Ben _got_ it, even if he didn't really know. And by this point, he was still a little honest. 

And, true to that statement, his brother nodded. He looked around the room, tracking where Klaus was looking as though he could see the ghosts, too, if he tried hard enough.

(He and Klaus would later laugh bitterly on this moment -- because what else could they do? -- one night in rehab when Klaus was sober enough to reminisce. "Give it time, kid," Ben had said.)

He sat down next to Klaus. "Dad takes me to a warehouse sometimes," he said. "He makes me let _them_ out, to tear apart pig bodies. It's really gross. And painful." He hunches in on his abdomen without thinking about it, like he can feel them even now. “He doesn’t get our powers.” It’s something between an apology for Reginald and a barb against him. 

"It's something like that for me, too," Klaus rasped, too tired to go into detail but appreciating the effort. He isn't sure if it's a lie or not. Ben did his training as best he could because, deep down, he was still scared of what the Horror might mean. Even as young as they were, even if Ben never said it, Klaus knew that he saw that night on the rooftop over and over. Even if their father was hurting him in the process, Ben saw it as a necessary evil to keep the hated thing inside him under control. And even though Ben came back with a haunted look in his eyes, Klaus knew he was grateful to the old man for it. Even if he hated his powers, even if he knew how shitty the geezer was, he loved their dad. Klaus couldn't find that drive in him anymore after the first time in the mausoleum. Maybe he still loved his dad, too, but he couldn’t bring himself to care that his father wasn’t proud of him, not after screaming himself hoarse in a crypt.

But it didn't matter how Ben approached his own training, because he was Ben. Because, right now, he acknowledged that Klaus was having a bad time. He held out his hand, and Klaus took it, leaning against his brother as spirits around the room begged him for... something. He couldn't understand when so many of them were just shrieking his name.

 

* * *

 

 

The Second Time is peculiar in how it is actually three different numbers, depending on who you ask.

To his siblings, it's the first time in the mausoleum, because all the previous years were kept under lock and key courtesy of their father, and in Ben’s case courtesy of Klaus who refused to talk about it. Fuck, five out of six of them only knew about it after the world literally ended, so Klaus’ secret-keeping abilities were at least one thing he got right.

To Reggie, it's the 144th time -- Klaus had a tally on his wall, because maybe he couldn’t stop it from happening but he sure could vandalise to retaliate -- which, preceded by 143 failures, required additional prompting. It, too, was a failure, but started a new phase in training regardless. 

To him, it's the Second Time, because the shift between this Time and all the others was so drastic that it needed an entirely new era to describe it.

The other 143 were characterized by a set pattern: some nights he'd be singled out before bed, sent to the mausoleum, told to stay in until the sun rose or his fears were vanquished, whichever came first. Then he'd go home, not sleep, wash up and be dangled in front of his siblings as a motivator to be better. The others would look at him with pity but also slight exasperation, Ben would hang out with him for a bit while he desperately tried to warm up and not go crazy (or crazier) and then he'd be ok for a couple of weeks. Or, at least back to his normal self, loud and obnoxious and selfish and thoroughly unable to take anything seriously.

Time number 144, though, that one was different.

This time, he was in there way past dawn. It was only until he was desperate enough to start clawing at the door that he noticed a handful of water bottles and energy bars in the corner, lit up by the sliver of sunlight coming in through a crack in the wall. His blood turned to ice and he slid to the ground, knees weak with realization because contrary to popular belief, he _can_ put two and two together. His father must have set it up before they got there. Suddenly he wasn't even sure that his father was there anymore.

So he pretended to talk to a few ghosts, because all of them were screaming too loudly and too close to have a polite conversation with, in hopes that his dad was still there and would let him out. Maybe it was the tremble in his voice or he just wasn't the actor he thought he was, or maybe he lost track of time and his dad got fed up and left, because nothing. He resorted to screaming again, sounding like one voice in a chorus of agony. Nada.

The time came and went, and Klaus could only think one thing as his mind became consumed by fear. His father wasn't there, unlike all those other times. It was just him and the dead, alone together in a cramped crypt, screaming at each other in visceral fear and furious desperation. He was the only living thing in a room full of the dead. 

He felt like he was drowning. He was getting tunnel vision, head snapping to meet any movement at the corner of his increasingly narrow sight. He felt his heart racing to the point of it actually hurting, and his lungs were burning, and it took him a minute to realize that, oh yeah, he’s not taking in air. He can't feel his hands anymore, which doesn't do anything to soothe his fears, particularly when the dead start reaching out for him. Despite feeling like he ran a marathon, and sweating like he ran one, too, he's _so_ fucking cold. Is this how it feels like to choke to death? He can’t really do much about it, in any case, because the ghosts didn’t need air to scream and they didn’t stop. They didn’t even let him get a second to breathe so he could beg them to shut up. Instead, he passes out.

He woke up and the cycle repeated itself. He didn’t even touch the energy bars, too nauseated by both the state of the ghosts themselves and the fear he felt from seeing them. He managed to take one of the water bottles that tipped over and rolled a little closer, clinging to it like a lifeline. It wasn’t even empty by the time his father opened the door again, he was too busy passing in and out of consciousness, and screaming in between. All he knew was that every curse he sent to his father both went away and amplified, at the same time, when his father opened the door, illuminated in moonlight in that ridiculous outfit he only pulled out when Klaus needed more nightmare fuel. As Klaus was clinging onto the fact that maybe he’d be let out now, that finally there was someone else with a pulse, his father just took in his grimy and tear-stained face, the unopened energy bars and water bottles in the corner, and the way he was still twitching and whimpering. Klaus was so tired, only realizing now that he felt like he got hit by a bus. 

He _tsked_ , then turned around, gesturing for him to follow with a snappy flick of his wrist. Klaus bound out of there, genuinely worried his father would close the door in his face. He couldn’t stop shaking, feeling weak without the fear keeping him awake. He almost collapsed onto the grass, and it was only the growing resentment and spite for his father that he forced his knees to stay locked. 

“Another night wasted, Number Four,” his dad had said. Klaus was too busy keeping his teeth from chattering because he was _so_ _fucking cold_ (from fear or lack of actual sleep or the chilled night air, he didn’t know) that he didn’t have a quip handy to throw back as his dear old dad. Reginald continued, “I hope you realize that while the others were able to hone their individual powers and continue their ordinary curriculum, you failed to even bother interacting with yours. Your powers, Number Four, are dulled only by your own fear. A day will come when you will either look back on this experience as enlightening or as your biggest regret.” 

And on and on it went; Reggie realized early on that the best way to get to Klaus, really twist the knife and dig it deeper, was to constantly remind him what a failure he was. Klaus could and did play it off but father dearest _knew_ how much he internalized it. Five got the same treatment on the off instances where he wasn’t impressing dad, because Five was a lot like Klaus if Klaus didn’t had a useful power that didn’t constantly cause him pain (and, _oh,_ is Klaus gonna regret that thought in only a couple of months). It was kinda scary just how much thought their dad put into how to individually break them down, but hey, Klaus had seen about three dozen ghosts for the past however many hours so he’s kinda beyond fearing his dad right now. 

 He was eventually brought home to siblings who were now able to see what the consequences of "extra training" were. The ghosts of the mansion had a newfound zeal about them after the mausoleum, even worse now than before, so Klaus was back to twitching and glancing around worriedly until his siblings started to look at him like a crackhead. He needed something to focus on. 

He decided that his nails were much more important than the looks they were giving him while their dad provided the Director’s Commentary on What A Failure Number Four Is (or the ghosts in the foyer, on the railing, begging him for something over and over, saying it wasn't fair how he was alive and they weren't and what the fuck is that supposed to mean?), but he glanced up for a quick peek towards the end. Luther didn't look phased, just nodded like he was taking notes. Allison and Diego looked concerned, like they were finally gathering what happened in Klaus’ extra training, but otherwise stayed quiet. Five wasn't paying attention but what else was new. Vanya seemed perplexed, trying to put together what extra training was without any of their own first-hand biases. Ben was floored, and it seemed like it made sense to him in the worst way possible. He kept glancing at his father with increasing horror, like he was looking for any confirmation that his suspicions were wrong, and just seemed more upset when he kept talking. He looked back to Klaus, and Klaus couldn’t even manage a smile right then. He turned his gaze back to his nails instead. Fuck, they were disgusting after tonight. The fingers themselves were raw and scraped, and his nails were chipped and caked with dirt and the Universe-knows-what else. Was he trying to gouge the stone? He legitimately couldn't remember. 

“Is there anything you have to say for yourself, Number Four?” his father asked sharply, pulling himself out of his thoughts. Currently, they were on what colour to do his nails. (Black might be a little boring, but it was classy and could hide the damage well enough.)

He opens his mouth, closes it, then waves his hands for his siblings to see. “I think I need a manicure.” They all look at him with a range of annoyed (thanks Five) to genuine worry (thanks, but genuinely, _Ben_ ). He levels his dad with the cheekiest grin he can manage when he feels a hand grip his shoulder. Oh well, tough crowd.

 

He's sent to bed without supper for that quip, but it's not the first time. He devours his entire snack stash he's got in his drawers and passes out. It's fitful and he wakes up an hour later, stomach aching and eyes burning but heart racing too painfully quick to do anything about it. Crap, usually he was feeling better by now. There's a ghost chanting his name uncomfortably close and it takes everything he's got just to not look up at them.

In shuffling through his sock drawer for that granola bar he had stashed away, he found a dime bag of weed he once got, kinda as an afterthought, on the purchase of some black market hormones a couple months back. He vaguely remembers it mellowing people out. He also remembers it making people more hungry or something along those lines. But he's already grabbed his leftover cash and out the window, heading back to the dealer to get some rolling paper, because he vaguely remembers someone mentioning that as necessary. He forgot his shoes and still didn’t do his nails, and combined with the circles under his eyes he figured he looked like enough of a horror show to ward off any people lingering on the streets this late. 

He finally finds his dealer lingering around a corner store. If Chad thought it was weird for a kid, shivering in his pyjamas, to ask for rolling paper and a lighter at 2 AM, he didn't comment on it. Klaus was tearful with gratitude. Chad just sorta shooed him off awkwardly, and Klaus guessed a crying child wasn't the best review for a drug dealer.

 

Later that night (or morning at that point), Klaus, with a blunt dangling from his fingers, leaned out the window and over the fire escape. It was the first time Klaus ever rolled a blunt, so it was uneven and pretty sloppy, but he really couldn’t give a fuck right then. He _still_ hasn't taken care of his nails, which he now realizes look like he climbed out of the grave, which is kinda funny for some reason it wouldn't be an hour or so ago. He's just so happy that the ghosts have finally shut up that he doesn't even care how tired he still is, or that he does, in fact, feel more like he needs to eat than before. But he doesn't really want to move, so he enjoys the sun rising over the city skyline. He breathes in the smoke and the smoggy air with an ease he hasn't felt in a long time. He's so at peace right now that he doesn't even hear his door opening.

“Where were you?” He hears behind him, and he drops the last tiny piece of his joint down into the alley. He curses, but it's for the best, he supposes; he was already burning his fingers a little with how much he'd taken. He turns around and sees Ben in the doorway, and he grins. 

“Twenty minutes ago? Oh, just picked up a snack at the corner store,” he says. It hasn't been twenty minutes, he doesn't think, but it sure does feel like it. Besides, somewhere in the haze, he knows that Ben would hate to know he was out so late. At least a little before dawn is a little more respectable. 

“Twenty -- ? I meant training, doofus.” Ben says. There's a little heat behind the insult, but concern to spare. And yeah, that's a new can of worms that Klaus just opened. But Ben and him sneak out all the time. If any of his siblings caught him sneaking out, the one who usually accompanied him to the doughnut shop after hours would be the one he'd pick.

“Y’know,” Klaus waves his hand. “Training. There you go! You answered your own question!”

Ben steps closer into the light and Klaus sees just how tired he looks. Yikes, Klaus hopes _he_ doesn't look like that, he hasn't really wanted to look in a mirror since...well, "It's been three days," Ben says. He scrutinizes Klaus’ eyes, taking in his general self at the moment. “Are you _high_?”

Klaus is hung up on the first thing he said, though. It's enough to take the pleasant haze off, at least a notch. “Three days? I was in there for _three days_ ?” He notices the frown on Ben's face deepen, and he really wants to say something light to diffuse it, but he's getting over the fact that their dad locked him in a concrete cell for the dead for _three days_. 

Ben takes his hand, but not in the hand-holdy comforting way he usually does. Gently, he examines his fingertips and nails, eyes widening in horror or disbelief. Klaus lets him, too tired to yank it back and hide it. 

“Klaus--” Ben reaches for him, one hand still holding Klaus’, the other resting on his shoulder. And after being in the mausoleum for so long, surrounded by nothing but death, his brothers really warm and kinda sweaty hands are like a lifeline. Ben gently sits the two of them on the bed. He flounders for a minute, seemingly unsure where to start, and yeah, Klaus is feeling that right now, too. “Are you okay? Can you tell me about what happened, where you were?” 

Klaus stares at his hands, and suddenly he's really tired. He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't know where, exactly, he wants to be, but anywhere but here is preferable. He for sure knows that he doesn't want Ben to be here right now, his Favourite Sibling™ status especially because he knows this is only gonna end painfully. At least if it was Luther or Five they'd go back to leaving him alone to do Luther and Five things. He works up the courage to look his brother in the eye, who's looking at him cautiously but pained. He takes a breath, forces a shrug.

“Dad takes me a mausoleum to practice my powers,” he said, simply. His voice cracks and that won't do, so he goes for a joke. “Because bothering the dead in their homes is just the _best_ way to make friends. Then again, the old man isn't the most social butterfly in the insectorium, so maybe that's the best he can come up with.” 

“Shit, Klaus.” And Klaus knows that Ben, as much as he doesn't _get_ it, does know how it affects Klaus. Even if he is, somehow, grateful for the training that their dad forces him through, despite coming home covered in gore and complaining to Klaus of pain. Because even if they both see their powers as bullshit, Ben sees the problem as within himself. If he can only push himself more, endure his childhood, he can never think about the horrors or The Horror again. 

(“And look how that turned out,” Klaus exclaims one night in reference to that, when his filter is a little fucked from ecstasy. He meant it in reference to how moronic and abusive their dad was, but again, he's high as a plane, so it gets lost in translation. He's just sober enough to remember the look of anger and grief on Ben's face, and apologizes when he wakes up.)

Klaus goes to ol’ reliable: deflection. “I mean, go figure, you stick a kid who can see the dead in a room full of dead people, they get demanding instead of letting you just chill with them for a second! No hospitality, I swear.”

“Klaus, that’s --” 

“It's good! It's all good! They were chill this time!” Klaus said, but his voice is quivering and it's getting really hard to keep this smile up. “I'm fine! I'm fine! It's fine!” and then he just bursts into sobs, which really punctuates how fine he is. He feels as young as he is. He's cursing out his traitorous tear ducts as Ben pulls him closer, hooking his chin over Klaus’ shoulder and not complaining when Klaus got snot all over his nice dress shirt. To be fair, Ben's got a dozen matching ones, courtesy of their fathers not-quite-boarding-school style way of raising children, where personalities only vary as far as their powers.

 

* * *

 

 

The Last Time is his least favourite. He bids it adieu with two middle fingers high to the sky. But in order to witness the utter disaster of the Last Time, first we need to talk about the Second-To-Last Time.

He's fifteen, going on sixteen, and when his father pulls him aside for “special training.” For the first time in years, he tells him to go fuck himself. 

No, really. He, Klaus Danger Hargreeves -- reigning Fuck Up Champion est.1989 -- told Sir Reginald Hargreeves -- three time Olympic gold medalist and World's Worst Dad fifteen going on sixteen years running -- to go and fuck himself. 

He swears on his life and his groovy new lava lamp that it's a slip. He's been drinking a little too much after hours and his father had managed to catch him exiting the bar section of the living room. While usually he's a chipper drunk, his father always had a way of sucking the joy out of a room like a vampire at a blood bank, and he's honestly spooked that his dad got the drop on him.

(Allison showed them all the surveillance room one day, and he saw the tape of himself doing a little dance and mixing a drink. The footage skips when he told his father off, probably cut in order to avoid thinking about Klaus’ few victories. _What a spoil-sport_ , he thinks as he raises his thumb for his younger self.)

(Ben gave him the Look™ when he saw that, and yeah, maybe context would help.)

“Absolutely unacceptable, Number Four!” His father snaps, and Klaus is still so high off the fact he just cursed his dad out (and also weed) that he barely registers being manhandled to the car at midnight. Once he's outside, though, he starts to panic. 

“Wait! Wait, stop, I'm sorry!” He's screaming. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please don't send me back, don't, _please don't, please please_ _don't_!”

Crap, he doesn't wanna cause _this_ kind of scene (he's more a fan of dressing up and being the most interesting sibling, at least by his own metric) but he's too panicked and drunk to care. It's little comfort that the people on the streets at this hour just sort of glance away. 

He's ignored, driven to the cemetery, and shoved into the mausoleum. He scrambled to hunker down next to the energy bars before he sobered up and the ghosts took note. When he was and they did and it got too loud to think, he just hunched over, covered his ears with his hands, and waited it out.

 

He's done with the energy bars long before his dad gets back, and he thinks that he was in there longer than the last times. It's been a long time since he's been there. When Five died, his father tried to make him live up to the Séance title, tablecloth and tarot cards and candles and all, but alas, he didn't turn up an arrogant snot of a thirteen year old. He did swipe the cards though, just for the aesthetic value of them.

(He's relieved that he doesn't find Five. Somewhere, he thinks, Five must be alive and okay, because if he had died the first thing he'd do is come home and try to find a way around the whole not being alive thing.) 

(He thinks his father is glad, too, and Klaus wonders for those years whether his dad actually gave a fuck about them, where ever he kept his heart.) 

In any case, when he turned up nothing except the regulars, he was sort of looked over. His father stressed how the rest of them had to work extra hard to make up for Five's absence, and Klaus was stuck on burpees and push-ups because if he “resolutely refused to make use of the one thing that makes you extraordinary, then must make yourself useful in an ordinary fashion!”

So it's been awhile. He's not even sure what provoked this trip (when he’s an adult, finding out about the tapes does make him wonder how much of his substance abuse his dad caught) but he's unprepared and it fucking blows. 

He doesn't even have a glib remark about his nails this time when his father asked if he had anything to say for himself. He just shrugged. It's pathetic, and he'd give himself more grief for not for the fact that all he felt, beyond the fear and the tiredness, was relief that _at least Five wasn't there._

He's sent to bed without supper anyway, which he finds out as he's walking upstairs before his dad is done talking. His dad is shouting after him, but what's the worst he can do? He can't do consecutive mausoleum trips, or else Reginald's only ouija board is gonna break. Nah, he'll get punished like a real boy for the next few days, groundings and no dessert and early curfews, and thank fuck for that.

He practically collapses as soon as he gets to his room, his already slouched posture just giving up the ghost. He huffs a hollow laugh for the fuck of it as he fished out the joint and lighter like he's on autopilot. It took more puffs than usual to feel like himself again. He had just settled into a comfortable haze when he thinks about how great it would be to hotbox the crypt. 

 _But how could I do that without dad finding out_? He thinks to himself. 

The image of his father opening the crypt door and releasing a dense fog of weed is an funny idea, but his current punishment is making it harder to commit to it. Yeah, hotboxing is out. Edibles? Too much effort, he can't get it done without someone finding out. 

 _Maybe something harder_ , he mused, and he remembers a movie on TV one night, and one of those after-school specials, vaguely, that Luther did on drugs (coincidentally right at the same time that he was high off his ass! He was so fortunate he was never considered the squeaky-clean face of the group like Luther was, otherwise he'd die of laughter right on set). Luther had an array of needles and pills on a table in front of him, his awkwardness only matched by his conviction that “drugs are wrong, you guys.”

But pills. Hey, now that's an idea. Klaus may be as sheltered as one of those rich maidens in Ben's classic books collection, but he _had_ heard of a dandy little thing called downers and their ability to make the world a little softer. 

Speaking of, the voice in his head that sounds a little too much like Ben wonders if that's a good idea, but he's gotten good at ignoring voices when his happiness is on the line. He's already on the move, baby, grabbing his cash from behind the desk and all but vaulting out of the window onto the fire escape. 

 

Chad was out while the sun was still up, which Klaus only realizes is a first for him when Chad doesn't seem to recognize him. And yeah, maybe he was previously banking on the darkness to hide his babyface and Umbrella insignias, but he can make this work. Allison isn't the only person in the house who can act. He saunters up with confidence and a winning grin, a story already on his lips. 

“I get scared on airplanes,” Klaus said, trying to channel as much as whatever actor or comedian he's just barely remembering as possible. He leans against the wall, trying to emulate cool-guy vibes. “I'd like to know if you have anything to calm me down.”

Chad is doing a double take at the logo on his uniform, and Klaus briefly wondered whether he was going to send him home. 

“Aw shi -- _shoot_ , you're a part of those Umbrella kids aren't you?” Chad asked, backpedaling on the swear as though Klaus wasn't fifteen fucking years old (and yeah, even with T he probably looks younger than that, but that's aside from the point). “Look, you're cool, but I don't know if I can sell it to you, man. I mean, what if the city needs you?”

And that's just so goddamn precious Klaus needs to stifle a giggle. Klaus, _needed_ ? _Klaus?_ Oh, buddy. But upon seeing that this dude was serious, indignation claws in his chest. “Uh, hell- _o,_  I'm a _teen_ ! The police _exist_ , they can do their jobs right for once!” He said. “Besides, it's not even on a mission day. Look, I don't have time for this, I just need something strong enough to maybe knock me out for a bit, maybe just make me calmer.”

Chad hems and haws a little more.

“Come on, I've got the cash, and I'm the one who sees dead people, I _doubt_ my siblings won't be able to handle something without me, if anything even comes up while I'm taking it. Which, Argyle is pretty quiet now, don't'cha think? Plus, this isn't a regular thing, just a special occasion. Small party, I've been sent to collect.”

It takes more convincing, and Klaus is a little pissed at the convenient arrival of Jiminy Cricket on Chad's shoulder. But Klaus also knows how to make a decent argument, and in the end Chad gives him a ziplock bag of Xanax. It's a decent sized amount, just enough for a small party, according to him, exactly as Klaus requested. And hey, “small party”, “a mausoleum's worth of ghosts and one traumatized boy”, same-diff.

When he got home, he tucks the baggie into a pair of socks and stuffed it into his drawer. He counts on the fact that his dad always made him dress for the trip, because he didn't trust himself to be able to hide it from him on his person. 

 

* * *

 

 

He’s taken to changing into his pyjamas as soon as possible, because their father won’t let him go to the cemetery under-dressed. His feet are always bare, just in case he grabs him during the daytime. Klaus is ready.

His father manages to catch him as he's shuffling through Ben's new CD collection. Ben is right in the middle of popping his _Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge_ CD into his portable player when Reginald demands his presence from the doorway.

Ben, bless him, grips his hand instinctually, but Klaus pats it comfortingly. 

“No problemo, Ben-o,” he said, trying and failing to make that sentence rhyme, and trying and _succeeding_ at convincing his brother. “I'll be back before you know it.” He turns to his father. “Can I just grab some socks first?”

And his father's eyes narrow at Klaus's willingness to accept, but after a moment they sorta soften with pride. At least, as soft as his father's eyes could get. His face just went from a sharp knife to a slightly duller knife. 

“Make it fast, Number Four, we have a long drive ahead of us,” he said, and it's bullshit, but Ben doesn't know where they're headed to, officially, and their dad intends to keep it that way. 

Ben squeezed his hand once more before he goes, and Klaus gives him a reassuring smile. He fully believes that this time will be the best one. Or at least the least shit. 

 

Okay, he didn't mean to overdose.

It was just that it was hard to keep track. He took one, and then that didn't work, so he downed another two a little too soon. They worked, but when they faded he took three in order to keep it up, and then he couldn't tell when they weren't working anymore or what and it just became a mess.

In all fairness, it was hard to tell the time. He didn't have a watch and the room was too fucking dark to see in. 

In any case, to say it's excruciating is an understatement, but the details blur out with time. There's a point where he sort of dips out of consciousness and the black spots eat up more and more of his vision -- not that there was much to see in the first place -- and after hours of agony, he blacks out. 

 

And then he's in the countryside. It takes him a minute to realize that, right, he's been here before. He sits up on the soft dirt road, stretching out his now normal feeling arms and legs. He's warm, and comfortable, and he hasn't felt this okay since...well, he can't fully remember.

He sees a girl heading over to his direction and he waves her over, eager for answers. She just looks upset. 

“That was a stupid idea, you know,” she said, sitting down next to him. “You should have monitored it. Or better yet, not taken at all.”

"Jeez, you sound like my siblings. I'd like to see you try and handle the ghosts."

"I know exactly what you're going through. I see everything and even I can acknowledge that there are better ways to have handled that situation."

He shrugs. “At least I'm not there anymore. Did I die?”

She sighs. “Yeah.”

And even though he was preparing for that answer, it knocks the wind out of him. “Oh. Oh, fuck.” And it's kinda scary to him. He honestly didn't want to _die_ , he just didn't want to be in the mausoleum anymore, or at least didn't want to be haunted as much while in there. He wants to panic, he feels like he should, but he can't get over how calming this place is. It's too familiar, given that he's never been outside a city before, even on missions.

“Language. It won't last, though,” she mused. She gives him a critical look. “I thought I told you not to come back.”

“You did?” Klaus asks. He vaguely remembers this girl, but like a dream he once had a long time ago. “Sorry, lots happened since then, you'll have to be more specific.”

“Nevermind. I don't know why I bothered, I always knew this was going to happen. In any case, you can't stay.”

“Why not?”

“You don't _belong_ here.”

“Well, geez, don't sugarcoat it or anything.”

“I'm serious. You're supposed to be alive, not dead. I don't know what I was thinking when I made you, but that's just how it is.”

“So, wait,” Klaus held up his hands. “If this is -- is this the afterlife?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Is my….” He swallowed, the lump of grief that was always chilling in his chest working up his throat. “Is my brother here?” He could feel his eyes start to burn, and oh no, tears wouldn't do. But as he's about to make a joke about Five's constantly smug attitude and holier-than-thou demeanor, his throat closes up again. 

The little girl's expression softened minutely. “No, he's not. You'll see him again.”

And Klaus does start to cry at this. Sure, Five was an annoying, cocky asshole who stole his nice sharpies so he could sign his autographs more creatively, and who always hogged the remote. He was simultaneously an over-achiever and too cool for all of them, and he was just a brat. Five was all of those things, but he was also witty, protective, and even kind. He may not have snuck out to get snacks with Klaus and Ben, but he certainly kept his mouth shut when their dad asked why they weren’t hungry. The thought of seeing him again, of their little broken family being whole again, even if the cracks still show; well, he's getting weepy.

So much so that he barely notices the little girl pulling a pocket watch out of her jacket and sighing. 

“Time to go.” She says flatly, and the world starts to blur around Klaus, and his chest is hit with something close to a thousand volts. 

 

He's in the infirmary. 

Reginald is there. He's staring at Klaus with the usual disappointment, but it's tinged with something else. He's paler than usual, a feat that even Klaus, who looks like a ghost 99% of the time, has to acknowledge. His lips are pressed tight. His eyes are unreadable. 

"That will conclude your personal training, Number Four," he says, his voice hard as usual, his expression not quite matching.

Klaus, though, just died in order to escape it, and he's going through his teenage rebel phase, so he's feeling a little volatile. All he can think about is all those times as a kid where he pled to an empty cemetery be let out. His dad doesn't get to feel…whatever he's feeling right now, just because Klaus died. And yes, it was an accident, but that isn't the point. He's fucking mad that it's come to this.

(And yes, maybe he could have reacted in a number of different ways, and maybe he shouldn't have taken so many pills, but he's tired, he’s young, and he just died, so he forgives his brain for letting his emotions take the reigns.) 

"No. No, I think we made real progress tonight," he cries out, making sure to lace as much venom in there as he can muster with his brain swirling. "I _almost_ crossed the veil myself there, daddy-kins. How's about round 2? This time I'll be sure to bring a lethal dose."

His father just exhales sharply and turns to face his mom before Klaus can get a read on his face. Whatever emotion it is, he doesn't want it. He doesn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be in the mausoleum a few...hours? How long has he been gone?

"Keep him monitored, I want to be sure that he doesn't try that...stunt again," his father mutters, but makes sure that he's loud enough that Klaus can hear him. He puts the right amount of outrage in "stunt" to fuels Klaus' own outrage.

"Should I tell the others?" His mom asks. 

"I will ensure that the others are made informed of the situation." His voice is clipped. 

"Be sure to bring up how all this has affected your _timeline_ , dad," Klaus calls out. "And hey! Are you gonna omit the mausoleum this time, too? Let me know what fun _excuse_ I had for overdosing!"

That gets the familiar anger in his dad's eyes. "Number Four, I am warning you right now--" 

"What? What can you _do_ to me? I died. I _died_ because of you!" 

"You died because of yourself! You nearly threw away everything to _spite me_."

"'Spite you'? Oh, of course, nothing to do with the fact I was locked in a mausoleum and getting high was the only way to not freak the fuck out! I probably would've had a heart attack anyway!"

"If you only embraced your powers, you'd--"

"Easy for you to say, you don't have my powers!"

"Maybe, but I do have the foresight to tell you that this _stunt_ will cost you dearly, and you narrowly avoided losing everything! You were born for great things, Number Four, and instead you play with your life as if it's nothing. I can't begin to tell you how disappointed I am in you, Number Four!"

"Yeah, well, I'm sure it's on par with every other time you do, so I'm not missing much," Klaus says, and he can feel the venom in his voice poisoning him but he doesn’t care.

“I’m proud of you when you do things worth being proud of.” He doesn’t say that Klaus doesn’t live up, but he doesn’t need to. Klaus gets the message loud and clear. Anger boils in his chest until his lungs are drowning in it and all he can get out is a huff of rage. He rolls over and just waits for his dad to leave him alone. 

 

Ben doesn't visit him in there. In fact, it's only when he goes back to his own room again that Ben shows his face. 

He hugs him, then punches him in the back. It’s an awkward punch, barely a tap, given that he’s still hugging him, but what matters more is the feeling behind it. Klaus feels like Luther punched him with how much emotion is behind it.

"I hate you," he said. "If you ever do that again, I swear to god I'll …" and he doesn't say anything else, but the growing wet patch on Klaus' shoulder says everything. "I knew I should have followed you," Ben continued, voice pitching up with a sob. "I knew I should’ve…”

“You couldn’t have done anything,” Klaus points out. 

“You died, Klaus! Like, clinically died! It’s a miracle mom brought you back at all! I almost lost another brother!” Ben pulled back, shooting him a glare for a half second before it melted. “I almost --"

"You  _didn't_ , though! I'm still here!"

"You  _almost_ did, and all I could think about was that night that Five ran away!" He pushes his shoulder with more force this time. "Promise me you'll never do that again! Promise me!" 

"I promise," he said, fully intending to keep it. To be fair, he had no clue what the future held for him. 

 

* * *

 

 

He's thirty one and it's the last time. 

He has been sober for ( _too long_ ) nine weeks now. Nine weeks, because “over two months” just doesn't have the same weight to it in his ears. 

They're still training and going on missions, at least until they brainstorm a better solution. Five plans on high-tailing it back to the future once he feels comfy enough with time travel again, but for the rest of them...well, they just got the little weirdo back. On the off chance he got lost in the time-stream, they decided to wait it out till he understood it more. Say what you will, but all of them, even Luther, preferred the Whole Hargreeves Collectible Set over a missing member who also had a hit-squad after him. For now, they were going to pretend as best as possible that things were normal, unless the safety or physical/mental/emotional well-being of a sibling was in danger. All for one and one for all was the new Hargreeves Family Motto, handily replacing that one about “When Evil Rains.”

One Hargreeves was making their lives especially difficult, though. Dear old dad figured it was “abhorrent! Unacceptable! Absolutely preposterous!” that they have a free minute to themselves outside of Saturday. Despite the fact that acting like a family was helping on missions, a vein would still pop in his forehead every time he saw the siblings getting along. So, to retaliate, he piled on extra trainings. 

Surprisingly, though, Klaus wasn't getting any of his extra-special field trips. He wasn't being woken up at the witching hour, he wasn't being dragged kicking and screaming across a cemetery. He was just...expected to do his regular physical exercises, the usual “try and talk to recent victims of terrible crimes and accidents,” and that was that. The others are still going through their personalized sessions, though, even Ben. 

It's honestly very jarring. He feels like he's being dangled over an overpass with a fraying rope: at some point, something is gonna give and the waiting only makes it worse. He's even started to act out, just to get it over with: for instance, loudly protesting Ben's training session. He would've done it anyway, of course, but probably with fewer “fuck”s and “goddamn”s peppered into the speech if his nerves weren't so shot.

Then, one day, he's called into his dad's office. The relief he feels is only matched by his dread.

“Your powers have been improving, Number Four,” he said, not looking up from his files. 

Klaus doesn't say anything, just tilts his head and catches the print on one of the papers. Oh, goody, a triple homicide today, that sure isn't emotionally taxing. 

“I must say that I'm impressed,” his father continues, and that snaps Klaus out of his thoughts.

“Um,” he says. “ _Je m'excuse_?” 

“That is an improper use of the verb, Number Four, and quite rude if we were in France --”

“Oh, there it is.”

“--However, I called you in to encourage you to continue pursuing your powers.”

Klaus blinked. “I haven't, though? Are you sure you didn't mean to call in Five? I get it, we look very similar for adopted siblings, happens all the time.”

“Be serious for once. I've noticed that you've become more relaxed with the prospect of talking to the dead. As such, I've scheduled a personal training session for you."

Dread yanks Klaus down like a sinking ship pulling in the people trying to swim away. He swallowed dryly, and all he can think of to ask is, "why are you telling me this ahead of time?"

"With your increased confidence, I've decided it's best to give you time to prepare. I'm sure you'll find a reasonable way to inform your siblings."

Klaus shakes his head. "No. Nah, that's a hard pass on my end."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm not going," Klaus said, mouth moving without a filter but fuck if he was gonna stop it. "Mm-mm, nope."

His father puts down his pen. Well, shit, now things had really taken a turn. "Number Four, this display of nerves is exactly what prevented you from reaching your truest potential all previous times. You won't _learn_ unless you come to interact with the ghosts."

"Yeah, see, here's the thing," he said. "It's not like they're just willing to talk. They're kinda more feral, since, you know, they died horribly and have been trapped in a dark, cramped room for decades. And I think that there's gotta be a better solution than _that_ , because being in a room with feral ghosts is -- oh surprise surprise! -- not helpful. So yeah, no can-do."

"This is an _order_ \--"

"Well, we'll see how my siblings like it, now won't we?" Klaus demanded, fed up. "I'll take a poll and get back to you with the results. And by the way, I know you've been keeping track of us actually getting along --" he gestured a little wildly towards the red notebook "-- so I think you can guess with that big brain of yours. I mean, hey, it can't figure out that locking a kid up with his greatest fears is a _bad_ idea but maybe it'll pull a miracle."

"Watch your tone, Number Four. It's not my fault that you refused to accept immersion therapy." He stands up abruptly, both hands curling against the wood of the desk. 

Klaus continued. "Oh, so you have a doctorate in psychology now, I thought you were focusing on astrophysics? Well, in that case, my bad, I should go into a dark, scary mausoleum, I’m just denying the results."

"Your attitude towards your powers has improved vastly, I'd say that it had some bearing."

"You? Please. I only got this way because I met one, one, nice ghost outside of the mausoleum. My way is better, and I know ways to dampen my powers if you send me back there. I know you don't wanna cause a scene, dad, so let me do _my_ thing, and none of my _super-powered_ siblings will know you locked me in a crypt since age nine. 'Kay?"

“Are you threatening me, Number Four?”

“Nope. It’s a fact. They will find out, because they’re not idiots. And they might even give a shit too, who knows! But it’ll be less awkward for both of us if you just let me figure myself out in my own way.”

His father's jaw twitched and his eyes burned with cold fury, but eventually he said, "You've made your point. I expect progress, however."

Klaus didn't bother answering, just tipped a two-fingered salute and waltzed out. He wanted to feel proud of himself. Instead he just felt tired and jumpy at the same time. 

He didn't expect Luther to be waiting at the door, though. His face was screwed up tight, like it always was when he was overthinking something. Or just thinking, may the Universe bless him. 

"What?" Klaus asked, gently leading him away from their dad's hearing radius.

"Did you -- was that --" Luther started, then cleared his throat. "You got locked in a mausoleum? As a kid?"

"Yup," he said, because going further into it was just too much. Luther seems to expect him to, though, because he's quiet for a long time.

"Why didn't you tell us?" He eventually asked.

Klaus blew out an exhale that turned into a raspberry. Geez, the puppy dog eyes he's getting from Luther, who just a few weeks ago was perfectly fine with locking Vanya in a cell -- and yes, he did eventually realize the weight of his actions and apologize genuinely, and Vanya seems on the way to forgiving him, but that isn't the point -- it's too fucking much. See, this is why Klaus isn't emotionally open. It’s too complicated in his family.

"Would you have believed me?" He asked. It was a genuine question, but Luther looks like he kicked him instead.

"Yes -- I mean, probably! I think I would have!" And yeah, he's trying, but he's still got a ways to go before Klaus feels like baring his soul to him. 

"Listen, big guy, I appreciate what you're trying to do," Klaus pats him on the shoulder, to really cement that there are no hard feelings, "but I'm tired. I just feel like I've ran a marathon and all I did was talk to dad. Actually, the latter is worse now that I think about it. Make sure the old man doesn't drag me to the cemetery in the middle of the night and I'll consider continuing this chat in the morning, mmkay?"

"D-drag you? Middle of the night?" He asked, but Klaus is already down the hallway. 

"Again, _the morning_. Maybe. No promises. Sweet dreams!" 

It's only when he's back in his own room, brightly lit and colourful in ways the mausoleum will never be, that he can breathe again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Constructive criticism is really appreciated! Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I know, it's sad, and it's only getting worse because next chapter is the obligatory Klaus in a Mausoleum chapter. Look, I've got the Buddy Cop Klaus and Eudora AU + the Tattoo fic in outlines, which are happier


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